The Go-Away Bird
Bird of the Day Series, Social Media Content
Meet the national bird of Angola, the Red-Crested Turaco, aka the Go-Away Bird, so named because that’s what they appear to be singing when they call. They are Angola’s national bird, and that country’s tropical forests is the only place you’ll find them—other than in cages all over the world. They are widely bred in captivity, because they’re pretty. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. On the one hand, Angolans view them as pests and go to great lengths to get rid of them, so breeding guarantees their survival. On the other hand, there is the huge cruelty factor of caging a bird.
Although they weigh less than a pound, Turaco are 20” long. They live about nine years but are prey to lots of jungle creatures and are suffering from habitat loss. They will eat snails and termites; they love figs, and devour berries that are poisonous to humans. Mostly, they eat fruit, flowers, leaves and seeds and do a lot of damage to crops and gardens, however they do much to preserve forests via seed dispersal.
They’re also very noisy, particularly at the crack of dawn. They’re monogamous and familial; if they’re not in pairs, they’re in flocks of 30, and they loudly call out, barking like monkeys. When they’re excited, that red crest rises to 2”.
They’re very poor flyers; they hop around in the trees, coming down once in a while to bathe or drink. Interestingly, their toes rotate.
Turacos are the only birds whose feathers actually have pigment in them. When you look at most birds, the colour you see is a special effect, the reflection/refraction/diffraction produced by their feather structure. Turacos feathers contain the red pigment turacin and the green pigment turacoverdin, both of which contain copper. These two pigments come from their habitat; if they didn’t live in the Angolan jungle, they wouldn’t look like this. Over time, when kept in captivity, that colour will fade. ‘Something that breeders, traffickers, and the people who buy from them, should think about.